The New, Improved, More Salacious ORU Litigation

As reported here, three former professors of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma are suing for wrongful termination. The Tulsa World newspaper has your ultimate online one-stop shopping source for news and information on the case, including a pdf of the plaintiffs’ recently filed Second Amended Petition (click on “The revised lawsuit” link).

Lindsay Roberts, spouse of ORU president Richard Roberts and something of a real-life Betty Bowers, isn’t named as a defendant. However, she figures prominently nonetheless.

Attached to the new petition is report at least partially authored by Stephanie Cantees, Roberts’ sister-in-law and his “community and government liason,” whatever that means. According to the report:

Lindsay Roberts, Richard Roberts’ wife, spent the night in an ORU guest house with an underage male nine times, was photographed 29 times in her car with an underage male after midnight and after minors’ curfew, visited Victory Christian School with an underage male 81 times in 2004, smoked with an underage male at her house and repeatedly moved her “male 16-year-old friend” into her family’s house.

One new averment in the amended petition alleges that the defendants, which now include the university’s board of regents, allowed a “‘convicted sexual deviant unrestricted access to the students of the university’ as a ‘mentor’ hired by Richard Roberts to work with students.”

Both Lindsay and the university recently issued written denials. Lindsay’s reads in part:

“I live my life in a morally upright manner and throughout my marriage have never, ever engaged in any sexual behavior with any man outside of my marriage as the accusations imply,” Roberts said in her statement.

“Allegations against me in a lawsuit yesterday are not true. They sicken me to my soul,” she said.

It’s not every day you see a non-party to a lawsuit issuing written public denials. Stay tuned. This one promises a high degree of entertainment.